My sole mode of personal transportation is my bicycle. I've never driven a car and I'm quite proud of it.
This blog is my place to rant and rave about cycling issues as I see them.

This is not a place for critics of integrated cycling - that conversation is over - segregation has no future - studies show it is not a safe or useful strategy, nor is it a healthy philosophy.

Thursday, 10 October 2013

Chuckin' it dahn

On this morning's commute to my daughter's school one of the other parents called us crazy for cycling in this weather - it was, as we Yorkshire folk say, "chuckin' it dahn" (raining really hard). Still is, actually. Probably will be for the rest of the week and next week too according to the forecast. And I'll be out there actually experiencing it every day, unlike 99.9% of the folks around me, who are apparently afraid to get a bit wet. Why? Because when I get an excuse to experience real actual life on this Earth, rather than sitting in the dead, dull, sterile and uninspiring air conditioned environment that we've built everywhere for ourselves, I take it.

I wish I'd had the presence of mind to tell the parent who called us crazy that I thought she and all the other parents are crazy for NOT cycling to school. Life is for living - it should be an adventure, and adventures sometimes involve doing stuff that isn't all that comfortable. There's weather out there in all its glory, and it's at its best when it's experienced at first-hand, with (at most) a rain cape, not through a car windscreen.

Not that I don't like comfort - I do - too much. And so does pretty much everyone else. But unlike most folks I realized that our desire for comfort is not all that healthy. So I denied myself one comfort - just one - the automobile. Never learned to drive, never will, because occasionally we need to live life rather than sleep through it.

Wider bottoms – a sure sign of obesity – sometimes contain hidden costs that have little to do with health care or the need to buy bigger pants or to reserve two airline seats instead of one.

At Central New Mexico Community College and the University of New Mexico, some costs are tied to new seating. CNM recently spent $200,000 on chairs to replace others that one official said had become too tight a squeeze for some students....

About Me

I'm from Sheffield, Yorkshire. I lived my first 22 years in England. Between 1984 and 1986, I cycled 10,000 miles throughout Western Europe. I met my American wife in Austria in 1988 and moved to the USA in 1989. I've worked as a shop assistant, a draughtsman, an artist, a bartender, a picture framer, a writer and a genealogical researcher. My daughter and I are probably "The Silver Spring Cyclists" - the only people in town who commute on the bike every day through fair weather or foul: rain, snow, hot or cold. No matter what, we're out on our bikes.

Quotes on Cycling and Society

"When a cow follows the herd, it ends up at a slaughterhouse. When cyclists use bike facilities, they end up at an intersection, often with the same unhappy result as the cow. Use the road - it's safer!" - me again.

"Vehicular cycling techniques have not been tried and found difficult. They have been presumed difficult and not tried." - P.M. Summer, paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton

"If American bicycle advocacy leaders had championed the civil rights movement, the 'Dream' would have been reserved seating in the back of the bus." - Jack R. Taylor

"The task of the 'protected' bicycle facility is to hide collision participants from each other right up to the point of impact." - John Schubert

"Position on the road is by far the most important influence that a cyclist has over his safety. Indeed, the loss of this ability to influence the actions of others is one reason why road-side cycle tracks and shared footways increase danger at junctions. Many cyclists fail to position themselves properly because of their fear of traffic, yet it is this very fear that puts them most at risk. Encouraging unsafe behaviour by directing cyclists to more hazardous positions does nobodyany favours." - John Franklin

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so" - Mark Twain